Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Today, the Supreme Court overturned a
decision from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and held that
warehouse workers who were required to stay after normal hours on the job to
undergo security screenings were not entitled to pay while they wait for and go
through the screenings. The decision in Integrity
Staffing Solutions v. Busk is available here. The workers – who retrieved
products from warehouse shelves and packaged them for shipment to Amazon
customers – spent roughly 25 minutes each day to undergo the screenings, which
were conducted to prevent employee theft.

Plaintiffs had
argued, and the Ninth Circuit had held, that under the Fair Labor Standards Act
of 1938 (FLSA), postshift activities that would ordinarily be classified as
noncompensable are nevertheless compensable if the
postshift activities are necessary to the principal work and performed for the
employer’s benefit. The Ninth Circuit explained
that the screenings were “necessary” to the employee’s primary work, since the
warehouse employees were required to undergo the screenings, and waited in
security lines many hours a year for the employer’s benefit.Overturning the
Ninth Circuit, in an opinion by Justice Thomas, the Supreme Court ruled that the
security screenings were noncompensable. To support this conclusion, the Court
explained that: (1) the warehouse workers were hired to retrieve products from
warehouse shelves and package them for shipment, not to undergo security
screenings; and (2) the security screenings were not “integral and
indispensable” to the employees’ duties, as the employer could have “eliminated
the screenings altogether without impairing the employees’ ability to complete
their work.” The Court faulted the Ninth Circuit for focusing on whether an
“employer required a particular
activity” and not on whether an employer is performing work that the employee
is “employed to perform.”It should not
matter that the employer could have
eliminated the screenings, or that the employees were not hired to undergo
security screenings. Apparently, the employer felt that maintenance of the
security of the warehouse was an integral and indispensable part of the
employees’ jobs – the employer required the workers to undergo a long security
check, every single day. The Ninth Circuit had taken a fairer approach, which
comports with our basic understanding of what deserves compensation. You should
be paid for the time you spend doing whatever the employer requires you to perform, while you are under the employer’s control,
and acting for the benefit of the employer. It should not matter whether
certain job responsibilities the employer has given you could be altogether eliminated by
the employer, because in fact, the required
activities prevent you from going home and doing the things you want to be doing.Employees are
not entitled to get paid for their ordinary commute time: they could detour to
take a child to school, stop for a drink with a friend after work, pick up
dinner or drycleaning – or do whatever might interest them. This time is not
under an employer’s control. California’s Labor Code takes the right approach –
and California wage claims are unaffected by Integrity Staffing Solutions. As discussed in a previous blog post, under California law, an employer must compensate employees when an
employee is “subject to the control of an employer” with no personal freedom to
“use the time effectively for their own purposes.” For example, an employer must
compensate employees for travel time if the employees are required to travel in a company-provided transportation, or if the
employer subjects employees to restrictions during their commute via company
vehicles, such as not permitting personal stops, forbidding them from picking
up passengers, and forbidding the use of a cell phone except to answer calls
from company headquarters. Once a worker
submits to his or her employer’s control, foreclosed from doing activities in
which he or she might otherwise engage, the time should be compensated. Why shouldn't people get paid to work, if their time is encumbered by their employers?